Remembering Fraser Valley wine pioneer Claude Violet

By John Schreiner

May 31, 2008

 
The British Columbia wine industry has lost Claude Violet, the founder (with his wife Inge) of Langley’s Domaine de Chaberton Estate Winery, the first winery in the Fraser Valley.

Violet, who was born in France in 1935, died this morning. He and Madame Violet sold the winery in 2005 but continued to live in the Fraser Valley and to follow wine industry affairs.

He established the first major vineyard in the Fraser Valley in 1981. The Domaine de Chaberton Winery, now the anchor for a growing number of wineries in the valley, opened in 1991. The winery, which made 3,000 cases in its first year, now produces 40,000 cases a year.

Violet had the resources to open a winery anywhere in the world. He was the ninth generation of a French family which, in 1866, began producing an aperitif called Byrrh. Based on red wine and flavourings, the beverage was so successful that 100,000 bottles a day were being produced in 1935. The cellar where the wine was made and stored included the world’s largest wooden vat, one million litres in size. The Violet family sold its business in 1977 to Pernod-Ricard.

Claude Violet had not been directly active in the family business. After training to be a banker, he chose instead to become in 1968 a wine merchant based in Switzerland. Subsequently, he was involved running wineries in both France and Spain until 1979 when he and his wife decided to move to North America and make wine here.

He ruled out the United States, as he once explained, because Americans seemed more interested then in baseball than in wine. He looked at Niagara and thought it was too cold there for successful viticulture. The Fraser Valley, on the other hand, was attractive for its mild winters and surprisingly warm and dry summers.

He chose the valley over the Okanagan because, at the time, it was a long drive from the Okanagan to the major wine market in Vancouver. “It was a marketing decision,” he said in a 2003 interview. “We want to be closer to our market. You want to have a personal touch and contact with your clientele. We have had a steady clientele over the years. It is nice to be in contact with them.”

In 1980, Claude and Inge bought a 55-acre farm south of Langley, almost at the American border. They imported vines directly from France and Germany, varieties for the most part that were not available here. In 1981, they began planting what became a 35-acre vineyard primarily with white varieties - Bacchus, Madeleine Angevine, Madeleine Sylvaner, Ortega and Chardonnay along with a few dozen experimental varieties – generally well-suited to the Fraser Valley.

Bacchus, a delicately floral German variety, emerged as Domaine de Chaberton’s signature white wine, so much so that the current owners have actually extended the Bacchus plantings in the vineyard.

There were only a handful of wineries in British Columbia when the Violets began planting vines. Many believed Claude was taking a big gamble.

“We did a lot of research,” he said in a 2003 interview. “We didn’t consider it as a gamble. We realized that it would work out. It was not easy, I can tell you that, to show to people who had another idea about the Fraser Valley. We proved that you can grow grapes successfully and that you can make wines that stand on the world market.”

Primarily a white wine producer, Domaine de Chaberton (named for a Violet family farm in France) was caught out when the demand for red wine exploded in the 1990s. Finding there were few red grapes that he could buy, Violet in 1997 helped finance Randy and Jesse Toor to convert their Black Sage Road orchard in the south Okanagan to grapes. Since 2000, Domaine de Chaberton has had big reds from Black Sage Road in its portfolio. Several years ago, the winery won a Lieutenant Governor’s Award of Excellence for a  Syrah.

(The Toor brothers also opened their own winery, Desert Hills, and won the same award a year later with another Syrah.)

The Violets also had a substantial impact on the Fraser Valley’s culinary scene when, in 2001, they opened a winery restaurant called The Bacchus Bistro. A gregarious couple, they often took on the role of hosts in the bistro and that contributed to its huge popularity. It was the first (and until recently, the only) winery restaurant in the valley.

Claude had a major influence on many other Fraser Valley wineries. He was generous with his advice and support of any of the newcomers who turned to him for help. Elias Phiniotis, Domaine de Chaberton’s winemaker, was allowed to help get other valley wineries off the ground. A savvy businessman, Claude understood that all valley wineries would benefit as more opened.

The growing contingent of Fraser Valley wineries now stands as one of Claude Violet’s legacies.

John Schreiner is author of The Wineries of British Columbia.

goodgrog@shaw.ca

                                                                         
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